With Official Numbers In, Sisi Wins Egyptian Presidency In 97% Landslide

Abdel Fattah El-Sisi won 96.91 percent of the votes in the Egyptian presidential election, results released by the Electoral Commission Tuesday showed.

The official voter turnout was 47.45 percent, lower than Sisi had wanted. Before the election, he said he wanted 74 percent of Egyptians to cast their ballots. When voter turnout was low at the end of the second day of voting, the government announced it would extend the election to a third day. Many of those who vehemently oppose the Egyptian military, revolutionaries and Muslim Brotherhood suppoerters included, refused to vote.

Hamdeen Sabahi, the other candidate in the election, won 2.9 percent of the valid votes. Spoiled ballots, ruined by boycotters or those who opposed both candidates, constituted 4 percent of votes. Sabahi also ran in the 2012 election but finished third.

Sisi will become the seventh president of Egypt after president Mohammad Morsi was ousted last July. Adly Mansour, the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, ran the country during the interim period. Sisi served as the chief commander of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, Egypt's army, from August 2012 until March 2014.

Sisi will take office on June 7 in the midst of intense fighting between the interim government and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that largely supports jailed former president Morsi, and a failing economy.